Awesome! Price-comparison engine Kayak "shows" tickets for the Sydney-LAX Oceanic 815 flight prior to the premier of Lost's sixth and last season. Search for a one-way flight on September 22, 2010 and it will be right there, departing at 2.55pm. Love the "click to see rates" link to Expedia (doesn't do anything, unfortunately).
- via, via

So how come McGraw-Hill's logo wasn't up on that Keynote slide of publishing partners that had cut distribution deals with Apple for the iBooks ebook store? Because of this interview by the publisher' CEO? As an LA Times' blog put it, "Terry McGraw shouldn't be surprised if he wakes up tomorrow with a horse's head in his bed."

Here's a recent quick interview on NPR with Mark Coleran, the designer behind FUI (fictional user interfaces) that have appeared in many well-known movies: "What [a movie character] sees on that monitor looks nothing like what you have on your home computer. That's because it wasn't designed to surf the Internet or do your taxes."

I was about to say that this new tie-in from McDonald's will cheer up all those people who got depressed "because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora," but after uploading my own mug shot I'm not so sure.

Anyway, here are some stats about Euro McD's "Avatarize Yourself" campaign in Europe from the latest Oddcast email update: "Our [18-]country, 7 language deployment has already racked up more than 4mm user sessions in a few weeks, with an average session time of 9 minutes, 45 seconds! One out of four sessions results in sharing via email or social networks, generating almost 1.2mm earned sessions."

By now, you have probably seen the AP story from Moscow about how a billboard on a highway near Kremlin was hacked to show porn. I also bet you haven't seen any pictures of the hack unless you know your way around the Russian corner of the blogosphere. AdLab to the rescue! The video (via) is after the jump and is very NSFW.

Here's a thought regarding the New York Times' upcoming metered model: instead of taxing its most loyal readers, the newspaper might consider charging more for the articles that are in high demand by everyone. Read on.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how Adblock Plus and the proliferation of other similar technologies wasn't such a bad news for the ad business in the long term: "It’s a case of advertising Darwinism, with the fittest ads surviving at the expense of the most annoying."

Just came across this recent and similar comment by a Googler made about the Adblock Plus extension on Chrome: "There will always be some group of people who want to block ads for personal reasons. But if we do a good job on the advertising side, people won't want to block ads. People will find them actually useful."

Very interesting: the proliferation of 3D tech in TVs and theaters may threaten the current model of brand placements because of how 3D puts background is out of focus:

"One of the key characteristics of 3D, as used in Avatar, is "limited depth of field." Essentially, this means that the figure onscreen in 3D pops out at the audience while the background appears out of focus. An attempt to focus on the background causes what some call "Avatar h3dache."

For product placements though, the loss of a clear background means the elimination of countless placement opportunities for a wide range of brands. Cars logos, soda names, box graphics and any number of other brand identifiers will appear to be just a swirl of blurry color. Any attempt to distinguish them will be pointless. What good is a product placement that cannot be seen?"

MIT Tech Review: "A team of European and U.S. researchers found ads displayed along with violent scenes to be more memorable to players than those shown with nonviolent content, even though players spent less time looking at them."

"Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version."

Told you someone should've put up billboards in that airport in Modern Warfare II.

Two independent reports less than a week apart claim Google considers inserting some kind of advertising into its Street View maps.

CNET last week: "In the presentation, Google tossed out the notion that ads may one day appear in Street View. Those ads would be tied into the listings in the Google Local Business Center and the Google Favorite Places program."

RRW today about Google's new patent: "In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties."

(Update): One question people seem to have about this is whether there's enough scale to make Street View billboards interesting to advertisers. Probably not so much on the PCs, but I'd say the Street View GPS navigation in Androids could be one application,something like what Dunkin' did with TomTom a few years ago.

(Update 2; Jan 21 '10): People got pretty excited about this news, so much that I got a call yesterday from a Canadian radio asking for a comment. I've learned not to get too agitated about patents -- if all of them came to life, including these from the 19th century, the world would've been a much wackier place. I mean, Sony has patented telepathy, in addition to a bunch of other mind control patents, which is by far a bigger deal than some billboards in some maps.

This Haagen-Dazs ad ran back in 2008, but I keep talking to my friends about it and have to rummage through my file folders every time I do, so I'll just post it here. The print ad by, I believe, Goodby, had flower seeds embedded into to the linen paper and could be planted into the ground. Goes straight to the rethink and rethink print collections.

One by one, all those crazy ideas from the Half Baked list are being brought to life. Shoes that print ads on the sidewalk? Check. Ads visible on security x-rays? Check. More specifically, they are briefcases with a recruitment message for security officers by Shield Security laid out in steel letters. "Apart from special promo teams, Shield Security uses the briefcases whenever they travel."

"The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation--blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era--and we are excited to collaborate on these ventures with the Polaroid brand."

Billshrink has a chart that compares the 24-month cost of ownership between key smartphones on different carriers, including the iPhone on AT&T and the just-launched Nexus One on T-Mobile. According to the site, Nexus One nets out at between $2,339 and $2,579, depending on the plan.

With so much anticipation about the tablet, someone has to make one already. I don't know if I need one; and there's a lot of talk about how nobody really needs one, either. Then again, I can't think of Apple being in the business of satisfying needs, except maybe for the very high-order needs like feeling good about oneself and showing off. Need is definitely not why I have five consecutive-generation iPods around the house.

Want, though, is an entirely different story, and the one with the much higher margins, too. And if nothing else, Apple is a master of cultivating the collective desire around its beautiful chunks of plastic and aluminum. See how otherwise reasonable people have whipped themselves into a frenzy over a mythical product without Apple lifting a marketing finger?

2. You've got to protect the screen. A Kindlesque cover would be inelegant; a swivel keyboard would make it a touch-screen laptop.

3. When angled, one part of the screen becomes a custom input interface (maybe even like 10/GUI).

4. When spread out, the screen becomes large enough to read ebooks comfortably.

5. The set-up keeps the device pocketable even with a usefully large overall screen size (to get to the rumored 7" combined diagonal, each of the two screens will have to be slightly larger than the current iPhone's. Hey, maybe the tablet is actually the new iPod Touch upgrade?).